Others

They know the language,

Share the smile.
Don’t care for anguish
In their lives.
They’ve leant the word
Yet far too soon
Hold out for love,
Reach for the moon.

They’ve heard it whispered

In their dreams.
They know the world,
Not what it means.
They’ve made their wishes
Through the night.
They’ve learnt to love,
They’ve leant to fight.

And never lived to see the score,

Never looked behind.
The values held so dear before
Were out of sight and mind.
They wanted to go on forever,
Want to be the one
To suddenly return and never,
Never regret being young.

Fencing with an Omelette

Step 1 – break eggs

Whispers in the mind distracted her, fingers tightening around her heart made her catch on her breath, gasping, wanting life and yet wishing to die. When would she reach the fulfilment of her life, the ultimate, when love and wonder mix with all the other worldly emotions. We are fragile as eggs, kept perfect, harmonious and innocent within our shells. Ho swoon they will be broken, destroyed and the moment stolen from us. Alone we stand together, where on difference in another person makes them so alien from us, immediately cast away, forgotten. It shall be timeless. The words have been inscribed on the heavens, in the stars, throughout the sea; timelessness is murmured in the clouds, seen in shadows on the moon, remembered by mountains, subtle in beauty. It shall be timeless. It is an order. We cannot go against the law set down before our petty lives were even considered, before our verse was written, before our part was cast. We were never meant to be. Our existence is but a minor confusion of the powers that be. Our existence is a mistake. We should not be here. And yet gradually fade away, as the sound diminishes after the cymbal has been struck. It shall be …

And across time children were laughing, all together, living in a way which seems to pass us by as the years build up. Seeing life from a different point of view which are we are now blind to. They think they’ll go on forever, they think they will succeed where others have failed; believing the world had been lacking until the moment of their birth. And what a wonderful way to live. Where every tomorrow opens up new possibilities, new hope, new smiles, new tears. Together they will break hearts, wreck lives, leave their mark of pain. Yet now all they do is sit together and laugh, thinking of loved ones, planning their parties. If only life would fit the plans we make. Why not let God be God?

 

You ask her a question, she gives you a proverb. All she could do was to call out across the air, through a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves, through a lifetime of tears, burdened with experience; all she could do, all she could give to them, all she could off, all she could say was ‘stay young’.

 

Necropolis

At dawn and dusk the sun and moon appear. Garish and defined against the indistinct surroundings, gleaming like eyes in a flawless complexion. We walk alone, unaccounted for. We make mistakes in life, in death. And then suddenly, what was once on either side is now side by side. Like crosses on the skyline, a memorial to ourselves, or a rising tower, a monument; standing alone amongst yesterday’s tears, rising out of a forbidden mist to claim its crown of sunlight. Towering above the meagre bushes below, which bury their faces in shame. By night it glows with warmth. By dawn it stands as king; an imaginary, dreamlike freedom. And how small we seem. So petty and insignificant. The divisions between us melt as the mist falls away around our feet, as though it had been cast from heaven; as we, someday, shall be.

And then it bows its head, becoming once more submerged by mist as another sinner falls from God – and is forgotten. Behind silken veils of translucent radiance and hidden beauty, it seems to near, so part of our world and yet is inaccessible, forever out of reach.

We cannot live by dreams alone, but exist with our hopes in sight, overshadowing our days, watching our every move. Then the surrounding hills pierce the veil of mist, and the monument’s magnificence is rendered insignificant – till dawn.

And we are left to retrace the steps until we can find somewhere from which we may begin again.

There is a sort ot timelessness ...

A place exists where granite lives side by side with granite, like the world’s first birth. Granite upon granite, rising skyward, stretching as far as the eye can see. Uneven, placed carelessly, rock upon rock, overhanging in some places, cavernous in others, parts of each stone chipped and dented with ruts like God-created steps. Some blackened by salt water or bleached by the unforgiving sun, speckled with yellow lichen.

And beneath, a foaming swirling mass of froth and bubble. A pure, virginal white – untouched by man. Throwing itself, forcefully and sacrificially against the eternal granite, dissolving into a million salty tears as despair sets in. Still it beats the stones, washing round the base of the eruption, ceaselessly, relentlessly, one wave washing against another, into another and smothering the fists and fingers of the universe, the form of which would still be recognisable to Eve in her first glance across the world. Yet still it torments, turning and returning, never weary, never battered. And the rock never moves, no stone ever tumbles. The sea retreats, beaten, and advances for attach again. It cannot make a dent upon the granite, never carve the whisper of an impression ….

And in writing it the moment is lost, the memory destroyed.

On Waking

The world looks strange by morning light,

An unclaimed heaven within our grasp
Which talks to us by day and night
But will, like lives and loves, not last.

And all the time it’s still the same

The days tick by without a whisper.
In years to come who will be blame
For never forcing us to listen.

Through all the changing days and years

In skies that torment, rage and weep,
May we save our dreams and tears
Until the moment we shall sleep

Suicide is Painless

It was to be the final meeting

Between two halves of a whole,
To separate thought and feeling,
To sever body and soul.

Each is and has one world,

The feeling locked inside;
A part of which returned
When all the rest had died.

There’d be no anger’s season

To force upon them hell.
Instead a calmly reasoned
Let’s call it a day farewell.

And one shall go on living

Though the other one has died,
Resentful yet forgiving
In painless suicide.

Though love is love’s own cure,

What dangerous steps to take.
More heartache to endure
From feelings that are fake.

The devil in Cupid’s bow

That loses love, and gains less
Tells those who are alone
That suicide is painless.

In Memory of their Feelings

'But o for the touch of a vanished hand

For the sound of a voice that is still'.

Division is the greatest fault of man. She was next to him and yet so far away, part of another world, cut off by bullet-proof glass. She saw him there and fell. She saw him smile, watched him move through the sweeter air surrounding him. She felt his warmth and sensed his mood. She heard his whisper but could not reply to his call. It was not dedicated to her.

He had caught her eye. There was something there. It wasn’t an empty socket. He saw, he understood. There was a connection made. No words could express the type of love that followed this innocent glance across a room. Each day he saw women’s faces on each wall. Never crying, never thinking, never speaking. In doubt, with silent words, he told her he loved her, begged God to grant him freedom.

She longed to hold him, feel the warmth of his body against hers, yet mankind stood between them; bullet-proof glass. He could reach out to her, but she could never reach him. Unknown and yet well known he dominated her.

There is, in all of us, a desire, a need for life and we can only live while we have the strength to go on fighting. For them it was a silent battle where they would be neither winner nor loser. If only time could stop so that their love and happiness lasted forever, so that the desire they held for living would keep them dreaming. Dreams of paradise had become reality, visions of love had come true. But we live in a changing world where we are the ones who change. That world chose to divide them, that world didn’t understand. That world had failed them in so many more ways that they’d ever failed themselves. Yesterday was their life, today was ‘in loving memory’ of things that are beautiful and never were, of things that are lovely and never happened, of things that are wonderful and never should be. Sometimes you can be on both sides of a valley. They were not so fortunate.

Through half closed eyes she saw him. In crowded streets she wanted him. When the whole world shouted ‘yes’ she heard his voice. When love made her ask questions, he was the answer. He was all of her.

When he saw her it was from a differing view. He longed to cross the path to her side, yet feared the floundering world she lived in, feared his passion, wondered whether she would respond. Uncertainty held him back. Fear of love stopped him wanting to love, but couldn’t stop his love. She was still part of his life, only a small part, but a part that he had no wish to cast off. He had the choice. She was the silent part of him.

She only fell in love.

Then the barrier came down. The glass melted, was shattered. The two worlds were joined through smoke, fire and flames. Heat matched their burning passions. Sirens clanged outside, they were deaf to outside worlds. They were one. His eyes captured a life that he longed to live where every day was profitable and mis-fortune non-existent. He dreamt of the happy days of his past, the year that he would never forget. Today may not have been a good day, tomorrow may be worse; but in his time of darkness the gold would smile through, the flaming brilliance of his earlier years when life was a long fantasy, stretching out before him into the depths of time ….

She held him close to her, trying to breathe life back into him.

And she was the one who saw it all happen, the one who saw the gold turn to fire. It might have been better if they’d never met, but their lives would still have happened, and even if they had taken a different road, they would end up in the same place, together again, eternally, to forget the past and make the golden memories once more.

‘For the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me’.